1. Recently, China’s coastal areas have been affected by heavy fog, and many ports have closed! Arrival ships encounter delay of different degrees!
Currently known ports are: Northeast, Yingkou, Jinzhou; North China, Tianjin, Huangdao, Rizhao; East China, Shanghai; Southeast, Quanzhou, Ningbo; Southwest, Beibuwan. Among them, seriously affected is Ningbo Port where many China freight forwarder companies friends said the arriving goods could not enter in the past few days.
Twings’ View：
International shipping is susceptible to weather conditions. Severe weather is one of the biggest reasons that affects the ON-TIME PERFORMANCE of shipping companies. In the same period last year, the dense fog weather in Shanghai and Ningbo made the cargo owners, freight forwarding companies, shipping companies and terminal operators all overwhelmed.
2. China Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Association issued an early warning requesting relevant foreign trade and freight forwarding enterprises to be highly vigilant against maritime fraud of overseas NVOCCs.
The main contents of the early warning notice are as follows:
According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce, the export bad debt rate of China’s foreign trade companies exceeds 5% (about 100 billion US dollars) per year, which is 10-20 times the average bad debt rate of developed countries. Among overseas arrears, malicious fraud accounted for about 66% (including the case where overseas non-vessel carriers and importers conspired to engage in seaborne shipments without fraudulent shipments, accounting for more than $60 billion).
According to the existing Maritime Law, the bill of lading of the shipping company that can be used to receive the payment, as a document of title, cannot guarantee the first issue to the seller, especially the FOB exporter, making the FOB exporter (about 85% of China’s current export is based on the FOB clause) lose control of the goods from the beginning, and there is a huge risk of losing goods and money.
At present, the issuance and circulation procedures of bills of lading completely subvert the traditional security practices. Exporters, especially FOB exporters, face a huge risk of collusion between overseas NVOCCs and buyers for maritime fraud.
On January 15, 2019, the International Maritime Bureau launched the NVOCC registration system in Singapore to strengthen maritime anti-fraud measures. This also shows that international maritime fraud is very serious.
The notice hopes that the majority of exporters can take the necessary precautions to prevent the risk of out-of-stock delivery and to protect their rights.
Twings’ view:
When exporting, enterprises need to pay attention to the following points in order to protect their own safety.
1) Try to choose CIF terms and use freight forwarder which registered in China, under which the bill of lading is controlled by the seller.
2) Be sure to get control of the ocean bill of lading, if FOB adopted instead of CIF.
3) Choose a reliable international freight forwarder. Don’t always focus on cheap offer.
3. The Qingdao freight forwarding fraud case was announced and it is worthy of serious industry introspection!
In the past two years, the international freight forwarding swindlers are crazy, especially the freight forwarding scammers in Qingdao! They are familiar with the international freight forwarding business operation process, the eagerness of the overseas cargo owners to take low freight and the mentality of the domestic freight forwarding peers to compete at low prices! Therefore, they first lie to the owner, and then lie to the domestic counterparts, and finally after the high-cost freight fraud, they would disappear without a trace! The goods are real, the company is also true, the bill of lading in the hands of the deceived peers is also true, but the ending is the terrible situation left to the owner of the cheaper freight and the freight forwarders who think they are taking the “big business” ! Recently, the Lianyungang Public Security Bureau successfully investigated and cracked a criminal gang that used foreign importers as the main object to implement online contract fraud in the international freight forwarding field, arrested 17 suspects and cracked 12 foreign-related contract fraud cases. The amount recovered is equivalent to RMB 2.12 million!
Twings’ view:
First of all, we must strongly condemn these odious swindler freight forwarders. Their actions have caused serious damage to the reputation of our Chinese freight forwarders and will be severely punished by the law.
There is a famous saying in the Chinese freight forwarding industry: there is no minimum price, only lower. However, many foreign customers often only focus on the price when choosing the Chinese freight forwarder, instead of analyzing the logical rationality behind the price. As a service industry, international freight forwarders have long had no huge profits. Still many customers are vulnerable to cheap temptation of some Chinese scammers. I hope this case will make a reminder to them.
4. Duckbill completes tens of millions financing in A1 round
Recently, Duckbill, which specializes in container road transport services, completed the financing of tens of millions as A1 round, the fourth in two years since establishment. Tang Hongbin, founder of Duckbill, said that this round of financing will focus on technology research and development of intelligent transportation management to improve customer experience and improve management efficiency, and will promote the domestic network layout. The investor is Fengwang Investement, who will bring more resources of the logistics industry to Duckbill.
Twings’ view:
Duckbill’s current business is mainly export container towing, and can only cover Shanghai and Ningbo. VC is so optimistic, I think, mainly because of the value of their data integration capability (that is, the future realized value of business traffic), rather than the current real profit prospect. But should the investor only focus on the latter, how would the story develop? Worth thinking.
5. Maersk received successive warnings and fines from China Customs
According to the public information of China Customs, this year, Maersk, the world’s largest shipping company, received warnings from Shenzhen Dapeng Customs and large fines of 60,000 and 98,000 RMB respectively!
The reason is, as learned from the official administrative penalty book from Shenzhen Dapeng Customs, that Maersk’s imported empty containers were respectively equipped with high-voltage power distribution systems and whisky. This violates relevant laws and regulations such as the China Customs Law.
Twings’ veiw:
The introduction of certain products through empty import containers is obviously aimed at evading the customs duties and other taxes of China Customs. This kind of operation is estimated to be very frequent, and the case found this time is only the tip of the iceberg. It is hoped that with the development of science and technology, high-tech equipment can be increasingly used to combat smuggled goods and maintain fairness and justice.
